I'm assuming this is a configuration problem. Some background. I'm running a Windows 7 VM with VM Player. I've installed Oracle 11gR2 within the VM along with clients, Enterprise Manager, SQL Developer, and ODP.NET drivers (32 bit and 64 bit). I have no oracle experience before this project but I have followed a fairly detailed list of steps set up by someone who knows what they are talking about.

If I connect to a service via the ODP.NET driver (v4.112.1.2) with 'HA EVENTS=True' in the connection string it will not connect. If I remove the 'HA EVENTS=True' from the connection string it will connect. I've tested this with a small console app I created that simply opens a connection then tries to read from it and close. The error message returned is 'Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleException ORA-24912: Listener thread failed. %s'. The internet is surprisingly devoid of information on that error code. The only solutions I could find is the listener needs to be restarted and reinstall Oracle. I'm able to connect via SQL Developer, SQL Plus, ODBC. Any thoughts on where I should look next?

After all of this I had a working Oracle install with high availability events working. Naturally these were not the first steps I tried so there might be some other contributing factor I missed in this list.